ANOTHER HOT TOPIC: REFUSING LONG-DISTANCE FARES
The question is, why would you? It’s a decent fare after all! There are a number of reasons why, as a hackney carriage driver plying for hire on a taxi rank, you may wish to refuse a longer trip.
The first is, are you going to get paid and will you be safe at the other end? It’s all very well taking advance payment but what if you are ambushed at the conclusion of the journey and the fare paid is taken back along with the rest of your takings?
There might be plenty of local work meaning you could take more money with less unpaid or ‘dead’ mileage. When you’ve dropped off a passenger on a long journey, you have to drive all the way back without a fare, unless you happen to be offered a booking or, if back in your area, a flag- down to bring you at least part of the way back - but this is highly unlikely.
Another reason could be that you are nearing the end of your shift and have plans to spend time with friends and/or family. Heaven forbid that we lesser mortals who drive taxis should have a life outside of the job!
You might have an appointment or a table booked at a nice restaurant You might have an appointment with your bed because you are fast reaching the point of exhaustion. You might even have a booking to attend because, as a hackney carriage driver, you can accept your own bookings as well as those from booking agents and licensed operators anywhere.
If the journey ends beyond the prescribed distance as defined in Section 37 Town Police Clauses Act 1847, which is virtually always the boundaries of your licensing area, you don’t have a problem if you want to refuse it. However, if the journey ends within the boundaries but still some considerable distance away you could fall foul of Section 53 of the 1847 Act which states,
18 Penalty on driver for refusing to drive:
A driver of a hackney carriage standing at any of the stands for hackney carriages appointed by the commissioners, or in any street, who refuses or neglects, without reasonable excuse, to drive such carriage to any place within the prescribed distance, or the distance to be appointed by any byelaw of the commissioners, not exceeding the prescribed distance to which he is directed to drive by the person hiring or wishing to hire such carriage, shall for every such offence be liable to a penalty not exceeding [F63level 2 on the standard scale].
So, if you refuse to take the fare without good reason you are basically committing an offence.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A REASONABLE EXCUSE TO REFUSE?
Arguably, all of the reasons stated above, plus the more obvious ones such as the passenger being excessively drunk or having in-hand an unwrapped partially-eaten kebab leaving a trail of greasy droppings.
If you are tired, the unsympathetic and glib licensing officer would probably say that you should have already left the rank and gone home to bed. Unfortunately becoming tired tends to creep up on you surreptitiously and it doesn’t necessarily arrive at a pre-set time either. You probably don’t realise just how knackered you are until faced with the prospect of a fare that is going to take you the best part of an hour to complete and then go home.
This situation has been aggravated by the fact that a number of licensing areas have recently merged to become much larger ones.
SEPTEMBER 2022 PHTM
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